Other developments

Published
4:00 am PST, Monday, February 4, 2002

-- Taxes: Portland General Electric sent Enron more than $357 million in federal tax money collected from its ratepayers during the past four years, but its parent company pocketed the money rather than turn it over to the government, a public interest group said.

Since Enron purchased Oregon's PGE in 1997, the Houston-based company reported more than $2.68 billion in profits but paid just $17 million in federal income taxes in its first year of ownership and nothing in the three following years, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that advocates tighter tax laws.

During that period, PGE sent the company $89.3 million a year on average in tax checks, PGE officials said. What happened to the money then is Enron's concern, not PGE's, they said. Enron did not return calls seeking comment.

-- Energy Task Force: A Republican committee chairman said yesterday that the Bush administration probably will end up revealing information about its energy meetings, amid reports of more contacts with Enron and other power companies.

"I suspect . . . the president and the vice president are going to disclose more and more of this information simply as a political matter," Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Vice President Dick Cheney has argued that his task force, which formulated the administration's energy policy last spring, is entitled to keep its contacts confidential.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, says it will sue to get the information. A federal judge in another lawsuit has directed the administration to explain by tomorrow why its contacts with the energy industry should remain secret. Source: Chronicle news services